There exist many diseases that are transmissible to man and animals by ticks and parasites. Of particular concern is Lyme disease. This desease has been shown to have serious and long lasting debilitating effects on man and domestic animals, including dogs, cats, and horses.
The economic impact of Lyme disease is considerable in terms of cost of health care associated with the disease, and loss of productivity for people disabled by the illness. Populations of deer ticks (Ixodes dammini), the tick vector of the disease, have shown asymptotic growth in areas endemic for Lyme disease in the past several years. As yet an effective means of controlling the deer tick has been elusive. While the eradication of deer, the preferred host, has been successful in reducing deer tick population on isolated island settings, this approach is controversial and the wholesale slaughter of deer is objectionable to many people on moral and aesthetic as well as on practical grounds. Dammnix.RTM., a permethrin-soaked cotton ball preparation, has shown some success in reducing deer tick populations by ridding deer ticks from the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus), a reservoir host of Lyme disease, in limited areas.
The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is the preferred host of the adult female deer tick. When these ticks attach to deer, feed to repletion and then drop off, they produce between 2500-3500 eggs, most or all of which hatch in the leaf litter below. Upwards of 250-500 deer ticks have been counted on a single deer carcass bagged during hunting season in a Lyme endemic area of the Northeastern United States. Thus, a single deer at a single point in time is responsible for the generation of 1,500,000 deer ticks. Deer are therefore potent amplification arms for deer tick populations and hence of Lyme disease.
Rather than slaughtering deer, which might result in deer ticks seeking other alternate hosts, including man, it would appear advantageous to exploit the deer-seeking behavior of deer ticks in order to effectuate their own destruction. If this could be achieved, one would then have a continuous means of renewably reducing deer tick populations, which would translate to reduced risk of transmission of Lyme disease to humans and domestic animals. Deer, in essence, are attractants and concentrators of deer ticks from the natural environment. Deer and deer ticks have evolved together in nature over eons to satisfy this required host parasite relationship.
Deer are shy and secretive animals, yet their behavior is predictable. Herds of deer hide in densely wooded areas and emerge to feed on grasses in meadows and other clearings and along to the edge of wooded habitats. The animals migrate along established deer trails. Like other herbivores they crave and require regular sources of sodium chloride and will seek and return to salt-licks on a periodic basis.